Former Vice President Mike Pence. NBC News/Getty.
Former Vice President Mike Pence will announce he is running for the GOP race for President next week. NBC News. Pence will make the announcement in Iowa and will visit all 99 counties of the critical early voting state. Pence is most well known as being Donald Trump's Vice President and it is unclear how he expects to beat his former boss. However, Pence has policy differences with Trump, most notably being a hawk on the Ukraine war.
Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie will also announce his candidacy next week. NBC News. Christie was a failed 2016 candidate, but has declared that he will run again. Christie has had a complicated relationship with Donald Trump, endorsing him in 2016 and helping with debate prep in 2020, but has been critical of Trump since then. It is unclear where Christie will find a lane as his favorability among republicans is extremely low and barely has any support in polling.
My Comment:
More also rans entering the race. Pence at least has some credibility being a former Vice President but Chris Christie has zero chance. Given that Trump consistently has double digit leads, sometimes as high as 20 to 30 points, I don't see how either candidate thinks they have a chance against him. And if something bizarre, disastrous or diabolical happens to Trump, they would still have to somehow take out Ron DeSantis, who is the clear #2.
Pence might have had a chance at a presidential run before the events of January 6th. The vast majority of people consider his actions that day to be at best disloyal and at worst to be outright treason. Had he stood tall and stopped the certification, it's very possible that Trump would be president right now and the absolute horror that has been the Biden administration would never have happened.
But Pence has policy problems as well. Unlike Trump and, supposedly, DeSantis, Pence is all in on the war in Ukraine. Given that the war has been a major failure to this point and has done nothing but kill a bunch of innocent people, devastate the economy and bring us closer to nuclear war, all at a time that the billions of dollars we are wasting there could be used on any of America's massive problems. As far as I am concerned that disqualifies Pence from the race.
As for Chris Christie, is this a joke? He has zero chance of winning. Nobody like Chris Christie. What lane does he have? Pro-gun control Republicans? People that don't like Trump but want a scandal ridden idiot to take his place? I don't see him having any path to the White House at all. And I personally think that this is a ploy for him to get book deals and speaking appearances.
At least Pence has an outside chance. With Christie he has flip flopped so much on Trump that both Trump supporters and Trump opponents can't trust him. And I can't see why anyone would support him on policy, Christie is to the left of Trump and possible to the left of Democrats like RFK Jr. and Joe Manchin. He's a huge RINO and not someone I would vote for unless he was literally the only choice between him and Joe Biden.
I do think that Pence and his run are genuine and it will be interesting to see how he will deal with the race. I don't see him as being the kind of attack dog that can take someone like Trump down, or even Ron DeSantis. He's too much of a mild mannered guy to really do any damage to anyone and I don't know what his strategy will be.
As for Christie I think his actual goal will be to attack Trump. Christie is an OK debater and has been used in the role before. He doesn't actually have a chance at taking Trump down but I am betting that Christie is hoping that he can damage Trump enough that DeSantis can beat him. Still, that's an extreme longshot and if Christie does damage to anyone it's likely to be one of the other also rans.
The state of the field in 2024 is fairly stupid. I don't think any of the candidates can even hope to approach Trump's domination of the candidacy. Trump's essentially an incumbent and voters need an extremely good reason to get rid of one. Right now the only reason anyone can think of is just not liking Trump personally, and that's not anywhere near good enough.
The Democrats only have themselves to blame for this. Had they not prosecuted Trump over nonsense, the GOP base might not have rallied around him after he was arrested. Indeed, DeSantis saw his poll numbers crater after that happens, to the point where I thought it was idiotic to enter the race. Attacking Trump doesn't damage him when it comes from the Federal Government, it just makes him more popular.
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